him we couldn’t buy 17 Pardoner Lane unless we gave it a name – I couldn’t live in a house with no name. I wanted us to look on the web, find out if it was possible to give a house a name if it didn’t have one already. You know, officially.’
Alice smiles, as if there is something understandable or endearing about my insanity.
‘Kit saw I wasn’t going to calm down or let him get any sleep until he’d come up with a solution to the problem I’d invented, so he said, “Come on, then – let’s go and investigate.” He soon found enough on the internet to convince me there was no need to worry: we could give number 17 a name if we wanted to. It’s easy – all you have to do is write to the Post Office. He said, “How about The Nuthouse?” ’
‘You must have been hurt,’ says Alice.
‘Not at all. I started laughing – thought it was the best joke I’d ever heard. I was so relieved that everything was going to be okay – Kit would get the house he loved, and I’d be able to make it feel like home by naming it. Course, on one level I must have known I’d now have to come up with some other obstacle . . .’ I shake my head in disgust. ‘I wonder what it would have been: that I didn’t like the doorknob, or the letterbox. My hysteria would have attached itself to some other random thing, given half a chance, but I didn’t see that then. Kit was relieved too. We were almost . . . I don’t know, it was like we were celebrating. We didn’t go straight back to bed – we stayed up looking at house name websites on the internet, laughing at the ridiculous suggestions: Costa Fortuna, Wits End. Apparently names like that are really popular – that’s what the website said. I found it hard to believe, but Kit said he could imagine some of his colleagues calling their houses things like that. “It’s a common affliction, thinking you’re funny when you’re not,” he said. “Wits End. Might as well call your house, ‘I’m a Dullard’.” I asked him what he wanted to call ours.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, loads of stupid things – things he knew were stupid, to wind me up. I don’t think he tried too hard – he knew it wasn’t up to him. The name needed to be perfect, and it had to come from me – something that would say “this is home” and make all my anxiety go away. Kit started talking rubbish. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s call it the Death Button Centre. Do you think the people at the Beth Dutton Centre’d be pissed off? Or the postman?” I told him not to be ridiculous. Should’ve known that’d only make him worse.’ The memory, absent from my mind for so many years, is suddenly more vivid than reality. I can see myself clearly, sitting at the desk in the Martland Tower flat, Kit kneeling down beside me, both of us in our pyjamas. We only had one computer chair in those days. I was howling with laughter, so loud I could hardly hear Kit’s voice, tears pouring down my face. ‘He pretended he was deadly serious, said, “It’s growing on me the more I think about it: the Death Button Centre. We could get a plaque made for the front door. No, I know, even better – let’s call it 17 Pardoner Lane . . .” ’ The words evaporate in my mouth as new fear surges through my body. What? What is it?
The Death Button Centre. The Death Button Centre . . .
I stand up, stumble, steady myself against the wall.
‘Connie? What’s wrong?’
I know what I saw – the missing detail that I haven’t been able to bring to mind until now. Yes. It was there. It was definitely there, in the picture with the dead woman and the blood. But not in the photograph of the lounge, the one without the woman, the one I would see if I looked at the tour of 11 Bentley Grove now. In that picture, it’s missing. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I tell Alice. I grab my bag and run, ignoring her pleas for me to stay, leaving behind the bottle of remedy she has prepared for me that’s standing on the corner of her desk.